Book Review: ‘Hunchback’ by Saou Ichikawa (a dark and intense novella about disability in Japan)

Translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton

At only 112 pages, this novella can be read in a single sitting, but it packs a heck of a punch and you’ll be left thinking about it for days afterwards. I definitely was.

It was honestly the cover that initially made me click on this one - it’s stunning! - and I’m always on the lookout for translated fiction that tickles by pickle and ‘Hunchback’ sounded like nothing I’ve read before.

Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka Isawa has severe spine curvature and uses an electric wheelchair and ventilator. Within the limits of her care home, her life is lived online: she studies, she tweets indignantly, she posts outrageous stories on an erotica website. One day, a new male carer reveals he has read it all – the sex, the provocation, the dirt. Her response? An indecent proposal…

Written by the first disabled author to win Japan’s most prestigious literary award and acclaimed instantly as one of the most important Japanese novels of the twenty-first century, Hunchback is an extraordinary, thrilling glimpse into the desire and darkness of a woman placed at humanity’s edge.

Even though this book has lingered with me, I’m still not quite sure how I felt about it, or even what the author wanted me to feel about it. It’s uncomfortable at a lot of points and it’s really some scenes are quite difficult to read, and that’s very much a deliberate choice.

‘Hunchback’ is written by a woman with the same condition as our main character, Shaka, and it forces the reader to directly confront disability, the people that reside in disabled bodies, and the attitude towards disability, especially in Japan. For the most part, Japanese people who has disabilities are hidden people in society, often reduced to less that human and are shrouded in shame. In the last twenty years, new laws have been introduced in Japan to protect disabled people and try to prevent discrimination, but it’s very much an ongoing mission by activists (who are directly mentioned in the text) to change the way that society at large views disabled people.

Shaka is a very confronting protagonist and from the very first word of her narration, her desires and wants and goals in life are just as complex and human as anyone else’s, and this, I believe, is one of the points that Ichikawa is trying to make. The portrayal of people with serious and life-altering disabilities are usually portrayed in fiction and media as innocent, childlike or pious in some way, but that’s just not the case; disabled people are people who can also have desires both expected and unexpected. From having a sexual encounter, getting pregnant and then having an abortion, to reading a physical book without the legacy of pain afterwards, Shaka begins to lay the foundations for getting what she wants to achieve within the restrictions of her body and her illness. It was incredibly interesting to see the consequences of one of these actions to be something that nearly kills her.

“Here was I, feeling my spine being crushed a little more with every book that I read, while all those ebook-hating ablebodied people who went on and on about how they loved the smell of physical books, or the feel of the turning pages beneath their fingers, persisted in their state of happy oblivion.”

I already mentioned how short this novel is, and I’ve come to recognise that as a standard for translated Japanese literary fiction, but I would really have liked a little more from this. Everything happened so quickly and the action escalated at a wild pace, with us thrown into what felt like the middle of a story that I missed the beginning and end of; I was left wanting after finishing ‘Hunchback’. Especially with the ending scene being so confusing! It’s not very often that I find myself googling the ending of a book to find out what the heck actually just happened and if I was reading it correctly - it turns out that plenty of people felt the same way and there are a plethora of theories out there. It left me slightly frustrated, but with a few days distance from it, I appreciate and respect the choice and it is fun for a story’s ending to be left open to interpretation.

‘Hunchback’ is an incredibly powerful novel and I recommend you read it, even if translated literature isn’t usually something that appeals to you. I knew very little about the treatment of disabled people in Japan until I started reading around after finishing this novel and it’s something I’m definitely going to start seeking out more in my reading.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin for the review copy.

Written by Sophie